Thailand Post's reported public-service gap

Thailand Post says it has to make basic postal services available across the country, including in remote places where service income does not cover the cost of providing it. In its 2025 annual report, it puts the resulting public-service obligation (PSO) figure for 2024 at ฿1.914 billion.

That is a meaningful number. It is not, however, a receipt showing that every letter lost money, a bill sent to the taxpayer, or proof that parcel customers made up the difference. Those are three different claims, and the report does not establish any of them.

The original version of this article blurred them together. It said that letters alone lost ฿1.67 billion in 2024 and that Thailand Post paid the gap from parcels. The latest annual report read for this recheck does not provide a 2024 service-by-service PSO table or identify a funding stream for the PSO figure. Those claims have been removed.

What Thailand Post reports

Thailand Post describes itself as a state enterprise with a nationwide service role. Its public-service section says that it must provide basic postal services — including letters, postcards and postal parcels — so people in remote areas can access them on equal terms.

It then compares the operating cost of those basic services with their service revenue. The difference is reported as a loss from public service, or PSO.

The series is useful because it shows that the reported gap is neither new nor fixed. It fell sharply in 2023, then rose again in 2024. The report does not, in the section reviewed, give a breakdown explaining that swing. A number with no method beside it should prompt questions, not a victory lap.

What the figure does — and does not — mean

The company frames PSO as the cost of meeting its nationwide service role when the income from basic services falls short. That supports a narrow conclusion: Thailand Post reports a cost-revenue gap on basic postal services.

It does not support several more tempting conclusions:

• It is not a 2024 “letter loss” figure. The 2025 report gives a total PSO figure for 2024, not a service-by-service total in the section reviewed for this article.
• It is not automatically a government subsidy claim. The report does not say, in that section, that ฿1.914 billion was paid by the state, claimed from the state, or left unreimbursed.
• It is not proof that parcel revenue cross-subsidises letters. The report gives business-group revenues, but does not match a particular revenue line to the PSO calculation.
• It is not the company’s net loss. PSO is a reported cost-revenue measure for a set of public services; the consolidated accounts record the financial result of the whole group.

Those distinctions are not pedantry. They are the difference between explaining an annual report and writing a satisfying story that the document does not actually tell.

The accounts show a different, wider picture

Thailand Post’s consolidated financial summary records these results:

The 2025 financial statements received an auditor’s opinion. The annual report is equally clear, though, that the audit opinion covers the consolidated and separate financial statements; it does not turn every other item in the annual report into a separately audited finding. The PSO section should therefore be described accurately as Thailand Post’s reported public-service account.

The report also divides 2025 revenue into business groups. Transport and logistics was the largest, at ฿11.190 billion or 50.00% of revenue; postal services were ฿7.705 billion or 36.66%. These figures show the company is more than letters. They do not disclose which group, if any, funded the PSO gap.

Nor does a positive group result cancel the public-service calculation. A company can report a PSO gap in one part of its activities and a net profit for the group. Whether that is a sensible way to finance a nationwide service is a policy question; the annual report alone cannot settle it.

Dividends are real, but they are not an answer

The same annual report says Thailand Post paid the Ministry of Finance, its shareholder, a ฿47 million dividend for 2025. That is a real transfer from the company to the state.

It does not prove that the state failed to support the public-service role, nor does it show that it did. Dividend policy, grants, service obligations and operating results sit in different parts of the accounts. Combining them into one neat accusation would be good theatre and poor bookkeeping.

The report also records other social-policy support in 2025: special EMS rates for small farmers, which it estimates at about ฿300 million of support cost, and around ฿24 million for emergency-relief transport. Those are described separately from the 2024 PSO series. They should not be added to it as though they were the same programme.

What readers can honestly take from this

Thailand Post’s reported ฿1.914 billion PSO figure for 2024 is evidence that the company says basic nationwide postal service cost more than the revenue it generated. The reported series makes clear that this burden has been material for several years.

But the public record reviewed for this article does not yet answer the questions that matter most:

• Which individual services made up the 2024 figure?
• What costing method produced it?
• Was any part reimbursed by government, claimed for reimbursement, or deliberately absorbed by the company?
• How, if at all, does the company allocate the cost across its wider business?

Until Thailand Post, its supervising ministry or a published policy record answers those questions, “every letter at a loss” is a headline in search of a ledger. The narrower truth is already important enough: a national service obligation has a reported cost, and the published explanation of how that cost is calculated and financed remains incomplete.